Lot 95: Windows

Laila Shawa (Palestinian, b. 1940) Windows signed and dated 'Laila Shawa 1969' (lower right) oil on board 20 3/8 x 32 1/8in. (51.7 x 81.7cm.) Painted in 1968

51.7 x 81.7cm.

A. Berdnikov & E. Serdyuk (eds.), Contemporary Art of the Arab people of Palestine, Moscow 1982 (illustrated in colour, p. 92). Palestinian Affairs (in Arabic), Issue 174-175, October-September 1987 (illustrated in colour, on the front cover). I. Shammout (ed.), Art in Palestine, Beirut 1989 (illustrated in colour, p. 276). A. Sayegh (ed.), Encyclopaedia Palestina, second section, Vol. IV, Beirut 1990, (illustrated in colour, p. 957).

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner.

Born in Gaza in 1940, Laila Shawa graduated summa cum laude in Fine Arts from the Italian Accademia di Belle Arti in 1964 and received a diploma in plastic arts from the Accademia San Giacomo in Rome. From 1965 to 1967, she returned to Gaza to teach arts and crafts to underprivileged children. She now lives and works in London. As a Palestinian artist, Shawa's concern is to reflect the political realities of her country, becoming, in the process, a chronicler of events. Her work is based on a heightened sense of realism and targets injustice and persecution wherever their roots may be. The initial impetus for a piece often comes from her own photographs, which are later transformed by means of silkscreen printing techniques. The written word is often present in her work, as in the acclaimed Walls of Gaza series (1994), which focused on the heart-rending messages of hope and resistance spray-painted, in defiance of Israeli censorship, by the ordinary people of Gaza upon the walls of their city. Her work has been exhibited in Italy, Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom, in most Arab countries, North Africa, Iraq, Russia, China, Japan, Malaysia and USA. She is represented in public and private collections across the world, including the National Galleries of Jordan and Malaysia, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the British Museum in London and the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.